Antoine Fuqua?s “Training Day” spends its 122 minutes inside the gray area of America?s war on drugs. It?s a good cop vs. bad cop story that has somehow given birth to a virgin view of the conflict of where to draw the line between what is necessary and what is abuse.

Ethan Hawke, who has made a career out of exceptional roles sandwiched between forgettable ones, plays Jake Hoyt, a fresh fish rookie with only 19 months as a cop. Hoyt is given the opportunity to work on an undercover special operations narcotic unit headed by Alonzo Harris, played naturally by Denzel Washington.

The film blurs the line between street wisdom and fanatical extremism from the first time the two interact. Washington keeps the audience in this no-man?s-land with an unexpected genuineness that subdues both the viewer and Hoyt into seeing the battleground through the eyes of the brazenly radical Alonzo. Washington is clearly responsible for the film?s powerful, violent impact, while Hawke is at the top of his scale as he brings a true sense of strength, realism and heart to the role.

The struggle to find a place to stand carries this film almost entirely by itself, but in the unraveling of Alonzo?s true motivation the film trades its originality and refreshing points of view for fights, guns and action sequences. This is accompanied by an excruciating 10 minutes of acting from Andre Young, AKA Dr. Dre, that brings the film to a vastly tired and disappointed conclusion.

“Training Day” brings viewers into the world of narcotics and refuses to letthem leave. Washington shows his dark side, drawing in everyone involved. But with the unimaginative climax the film loses its seductively innovative beginnings, and finds only Washington enjoying his chosen occupation for a couple of hours. Strangely, that is enough.